background/purpose

I have been a big fan of behavior-management app ClassDojo for several years now… basically, ever since its inception. I started by using it in my computer classes with students in grades K-6, and it allowed me to easily send behavior reports to their homeroom teachers.

Often, those teachers would have a system of rewards based on performance. I, too, have used ClassDojo for this purpose in my class (and this year I plan to use it as a currency system integrated with my PokéMath classroom game!) Unfortunately, the app lacks built-in tools to help facilitate any sort of rewards or currency system in the classroom. Some teachers like to use the points as currency that can be spent, in a classroom store or auction. Some teachers like to use points as “raffle tickets” to win prizes. Doing any of the above has been a fairly difficult process to manage… until now!

I programmed Class Bank & Raffle to help streamline and facilitate the process of doing any or all of the above in your classroom! It still takes a few steps, but is much simpler than manually managing the processes… so let’s get started!

class bank setup / import

To set up Class Bank, create any blank Google Spreadsheet that you would like to use. You can name this file anything you want, and store it in any folder.

Next, install the Class Bank & Raffle add-on. This can be done under Add-Ons–>Get add-ons…

Upon install, your Add-Ons menu will now have a Class Bank sub-menu. This is where you will go to: Update or Reset your students’ points in the bank; Spend student points; or do a Raffle drawing.

To get set up — and every time you want to update the balances in the bank to reflect current totals in ClassDojo — you will need to download a ClassDojo Report csv file and make sure it goes into Google Drive (as a Google Sheet). Here’s how to do this:

a) Log into ClassDojo and open your class. Click on the “View Reports” button:

b) Click on “View Spreadsheet” to download the CSV file:

c) Upload the CSV file into a location of your choice in Google Drive. You may want to make a special folder for these. You may also want to either delete them after each use, or rename them to make it easier to find the correct one you are looking for. Note: The file doesn’t automatically get uploaded as a Google Sheet unless you first go into the Settings (gear icon) of Google Drive and make sure the “Convert Uploads” checkbox is checked.

Once you have a ClassDojo file ready to use as a Sheet in Google Drive, Class Bank will work! First, you just need to Import Points (from the Add-Ons–>Class Bank menu.) The first time you do this, be sure to select the “Reset” option, which imports all points and resets all “Spent Points” back to zero! Note: The Import Points feature defaults to “Add to existing points” because, if you prefer Total Points, it is easy to re-do the import with the correct setting… but if you chose Total and you really wanted to Add to existing points, you can not later recover your old point balance! (You could always use the Google Sheet’s File/Changes history to recover an older version, though)

spend points

Class Bank will automatically keep track of how many points your students have spent and keep a running balance for easy reference. If a student tries to spend points, you don’t need to worry about manually checking whether they have enough to spend in their balance — Class Bank will check to see if they have enough points and, if there are insufficient funds in the Balance, it will not deduct the points and it will let you know which students had insufficient funds!

To spend points, simply enter a specified point value in the box, and check the boxes of all students who will be spending that many points.. This amount of points will be deducted from all selected students (as long as they have enough!)

raffle

The raffle drawing can be run at any time and does not alter the points in any way — it simply chooses “winners” based on how many points they have! Each point a student has is one entry/ticket in the raffle.

First, you must specify whether you want to use Total Points or the points in the Balance (this works well if you want to use both currency and raffles in your classroom.) You can also set how many drawings to do in a row, and whether to limit to one prize per student — using this feature means students with more points will still have a better chance of winning a “top prize” or first pick, but will not be selected more than once.

privacy / coppa / FERPA compliance

Class Bank is a Google Sheets add-on that does not collect nor share any of the information contained within your files with any third parties. The only people who can see or access your spreadsheets (including data downloaded from ClassDojo) are those who have permissions set for the file/folder in your Google Drive. Be sure to follow your school’s policies/guidelines regarding ClassDojo and Google Drive & Google Apps for Education, and the best practice is to keep the Class Bank file and ClassDojo reports in a folder that is visible only to yourself.

bug reports & suggestions

If you have any suggestions or need to report any bugs, please contact me at: mattgudenius@gmail.com